Abstract

The question of whether corticosteroid drugs should be prescribed arises each time a patient's liver disease is diagnostically labeled chronic active hepatitis. Early reports of the use of these drugs in symptomatic patients suggested a beneficial effect, but the studies were uncontrolled. During the past decade four controlled trials—two from London (1, 2), one from Copenhagen (3), and an ongoing study at the Mayo Clinic (4-7)—have been conducted to examine the validity of the earlier reports. The published reports of each of these four trials suggested that the side effects of corticosteroid therapy, with or without concomittant azathioprine, were more